Those who believe that tablets are the future will find a simpler and purer system in the iPad. And those who believe that the PC is where it's at and always will be might be turned off by what they see as the unnecessary tabletization of Windows... But that's the issue: Traditional PCs might soon be in the minority compared with other computing devices.

The worry, simply, is that Microsoft's quest to create a no-compromises version of Windows that answers all needs might have resulted in something that is very much a compromise.